


Trapeze

by platoapproved



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Birthday, Emotional Baggage, Humor, M/M, Most of which belongs to Steve, Slash, Team Bonding, Threesome - M/M/M, UNFINISHED AND IT'S NEVER GONNA BE DEAL WITH IT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platoapproved/pseuds/platoapproved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony installs a set of trapeze for Clint's birthday, Clint agrees to teach Steve how to use them, a decision which has far-reaching and unexpected consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS FIC IS UNFINISHED AND HAS BEEN FOR ABOUT A MILLION YEARS if you're not into that don't read it.

"Alright, ladies," Clint said, hands planted on his hips. "Predictions?"

"I know not, my friend," said Thor, grin as broad and warm as the rest of him, "But if this room indeed contains a gift from Tony to celebrate the day of your birth, it shall be something most extravagant."

Bruce laughed softly in agreement, not looking up from the miniature tablet on which he was scanning the morning's news. That was a habit of his, Clint had noticed. It wasn't that he couldn't be bothered to pay attention, like Tony. He still listened and chipped in now and then. He wondered if it had to do with the whole shy guy thing - gave him somewhere to look, something to do with his hands.

The five of them were standing before a door that had been wrapped in shiny magenta paper and adorned with bright gold bows arranged in a bow-and-arrow pattern. Steve had been the one to notice it, when he'd come in for his morning workout. The door had been there before, of course, unmarked and locked, and everyone had assumed it was a storage closet. Steve had gone ahead with his workout before he went to inform Clint. The archer had made it very clear to them all that anything short of a global disaster was not a sufficient excuse to wake him up before 9 o'clock.

A short matter of minutes later, Clint had assembled his fellow Avengers, all except Tony himself, who was in Malibu for the weekend for Stark Industries business.

"Maybe it's an archery range?" suggested Steve. Clint scoffed and sent him a pitying glance.

"What?" he asked.

"I don't think you've quite grasped the Tony Stark sense of humor," Clint said. He'd heard so much from Natasha about her time spent observing Tony Stark that it was almost like he'd been there himself. He certainly considered himself an expert, compared to Steve. "It's not going to be something I actually want."

"It wasn't a bad guess," Steve insisted, a touch defensive. "Why else would you have to come through the gym?"

"But there's already an archery range next to the obstacle course," Clint pointed out, "You think I wouldn't insist on one before moving my ass in here?"

"Oh," said Steve. Then, after a pause, he muttered, "Maybe it's a second one."

"Pony," Bruce offered, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. "He's definitely gotten you a pony. Or built you a robotic one and installed JARVIS."

"Wouldn't put it past him. Nat, what do you think?"

She raised her eyebrows at him blandly, and said nothing.

"Aw, come on!" Clint cried, throwing his hands in the air, "How can you already know? It's MY birthday!" The corners of her mouth curled in a smug smile. "That's just not fair. Did you sneak in, or did you weasel the secret out of Tony? Just ‘cause he’s terrified of you…"

She looked down at her nails, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Clint.”

"I do not understand the purpose of this delay," Thor complained, "Open the door!"

Clint let out a long sigh, shooting Natasha one last dirty look. Then he reached out with two hands, tearing free a wide diagonal slash of the wrapping paper. "It isn't right if you don't rip it," he explained to no one in particular, plucking off one of the gold bows. He held it in his hand like a grenade, eyes flicking to Natasha's breasts for a fraction of a second. She gave him a look that said _Try it and you'll never walk again_. He rapidly reconsidered. "Here you go, Cap." Clint pressed the bow to one of Steve's (impressive) pecs, where it stuck to his fitted white crew shirt. He managed to get in a bit of a discreet feel at the same time, because hey, it was his birthday tomorrow, and who wouldn't?

"I knew this outfit was missing something," Steve said dryly, surprising a laugh out of Clint.

He opened the door with considerable flair. The lights flickered on automatically, revealing a room much larger than Clint had been expecting. The floor was padded from wall to wall, a safety net hanging some feet above it and, towering above that, a set of trapeze and a tightwire.

As the others trickled in after him, Clint was already pulling out his phone and dialing Tony. "What, no flaming hoops?" he said, in lieu of hello.

"They're locked up in the storage room," Tony responded without missing a beat. "You didn't think I was going to trust you with fire in my brand new Tower, did you?" Clint could hear grumbling in the background and the distinctive hiss of Pepper telling Tony to hang up that instant. Probably in the middle of a board meeting. Served him right.

"Fuck you, Stark," Clint said, affably.

"You're quite welcome, birthday boy. You weren't supposed to open it until tomorrow, you know. How’d you like the bow--"

Clint hung up.

"Explain this," Thor requested, gaping up at the contraptions.

Clint shrugged. "I grew up in the circus." He pretended not to notice Steve turning towards him in surprise. "Guess Stark thought it'd piss me off." Or, he thought, Tony had known in advance just how much he would love it. He looked over at Natasha, expecting confirmation that she'd recommended it to him, but she was too busy shaking her head in exasperation.

"Thor means explain what it is, idiot. I don't think they have big tops in Asgard."

Clint clapped a hand to his chest in mock-surprise. "Harsh!" he gasped melodramatically, "It's bad manners to insult a guy on his birthday."

"I call them like I see them," Natasha said flatly.

He gasped again, this time adding a backwards stagger for emphasis, "Baby, why do you have to be so cruel?"

"Call me baby one more time," she threatened, "and I'll break your jaw so badly you'll be eating nothing but pureed prunes for months."

Clint's lower lip began to tremble theatrically.

Natasha raised an eyebrow.

Whilst the two of them were at it, Bruce looked up from his tablet to explain what a circus was to Thor, Steve chiming in with the occasional detail. They'd all learned after a day or two that it was best to just leave the pair of assassins to it when they got like this. 

Of course, none of them realized that this amount of banter was out of the ordinary for Clint and Natasha. Most of the time, it was Clint who did the pestering, and Natasha didn’t bother rising to the bait. She only ribbed him like this when he was stuck in SHIELD medical, after she’d finished berating him in rapid-fire Russian for whatever stupid, reckless thing he'd done to land himself there. In this case, it was something she’d carried on doing, even weeks after, because Loki had left Clint injuries of a different sort, and Natasha was the only one who always remembered they were there.

"And you are skilled in this art, Clint?" Thor interrupted them.

"It wasn't my exactly specialty, but I'm pretty damn good, yeah."

"Is modesty your specialty?" Natasha muttered under her breath. Clint shot her a shit-eating grin. Steve was watching their interaction, a small crease between his pale eyebrows. Clint hoped he wasn’t going to pull Natasha aside for a lecture on team morale or something equally corny. He just didn’t get it, didn’t understand how much she was helping Clint by treating him like this.

"Then you must demonstrate for us!" Thor said.

"The trapeze is much more impressive with two." Clint glanced back at Natasha. She was an even better acrobat than he was, but she'd broken her wrist in the fight against Loki and his alien army. It was healing well, but she was hardly going to risk recreational aerial acrobatics while the bone was still mending.

"You could teach me," Steve suggested. Clint thought he was offering out of politeness - he seemed like the sort of guy who would - until he saw the bright-eyed enthusiasm on Steve’s face. He doubted there were a dozen people on Earth capable of saying no to that excited puppy-dog look, and he certainly wasn't one of them. Besides, it wasn't often a guy had a chance to teach Captain America how to do something. What with the super soldier thing, Steve would probably be better at it than him in a matter of hours, and Clint wasn’t sure he'd even be able to hold it against him. Not if he kept making that face.

"Sure thing, Cap."

Clint had seen Steve smile a few times, since they'd all moved into the Tower, but never like this. Those had been perfunctory half-smiles, closed-lipped and polite. Turned out, when Steve smiled for real, it was downright goofy, all top-teeth and crinkles around his closed eyes. It made Clint want to make him smile more often.

"Fan of the circus?" he asked.

Steve laughed, shaking his head. "Am I that obvious?"

"Yes," Natasha said, her eyes flicking between the two men and narrowing almost imperceptibly when they met Clint's. "You're very obvious."

It would never cease to amaze him, how Natasha could read him like a book, how she always knew exactly what was thinking, sometimes even before he knew it himself. "How about you boys stay down here and play, and we'll come get you when breakfast’s done.” She linked arms with Bruce and Thor, “Come on, you two are going to help me cook." With that, she steering them out, leaving Clint and Steve alone to test out the trapeze.


	2. Chapter 2

“Bucky and I used to go see the circus, when we could scrape together the dough.”

True to Clint’s prediction, Steve was a natural at this. He was already hanging from the trapeze by his knees, swinging confidently, copying Clint’s every move. He’d changed into his Captain America costume, minus the clunky bits (cowl, gloves, boots, belt). Not only was it well-suited for acrobatics, but Clint found it rather hypnotic, watching Steve’s abs shift beneath the red-and-white vertical bands.

“Tight budget?” he asked.

Steve shrugged, the gesture strange with the two of them upside-down. "It was the thirties,” he said, matter-of-factly, “and we didn't have parents.”

Clint forgot, most of the time, that Steve hadn’t always been Captain America. That he’d grown up, from the sound of it, a poor, wimpy kid in Brooklyn during the Great Depression.

“Should've joined the circus. Worked for me." Clint flashed Steve a smile, “I thought that’s what all the cool orphans did?”

“Doubt they would’ve had me,” Steve said, “I’m not very cool.”

“You’re on a team of freaks and outcasts, Cap. None of us are all that cool.” There was a pause. “Except Natasha,” Clint added, at the exact same moment as Steve said, “Except Tony.”

Clint laughed. “Do I detect a crush?” His voice was saccharine, dripping with schoolyard mockery.

“No,” Steve denied fiercely. Clint didn’t know if it was just him, but it looked as though Steve’s ears had gone red. He wrote it off as a result of Steve hanging upside-down for so long – he was having a hard enough time ignoring the sharp pang of jealousy without any further evidence to support his teasing supposition.

“Don’t swing that way?”

“It’s not a question of swinging,” Steve said. Then, before Clint could interrogate him further, he asked, “What about you and Natasha? Is she your girl?”

Clint shifted positions, grabbing the horizontal bar and swinging from it by his arms, keeping his torso and legs tensed. “I’m gonna give you a piece of advice that’ll save you a lot of trouble in the future, Cap,” Clint said, swinging his body in controlled movements, picking up momentum. “Don’t ever let Natasha hear you call her someone’s girl.” Then, because he figured Steve deserved a real answer, he said, “And don’t even try to understand me and Nat. They haven’t invented a word for whatever she and I are to each other.” Slyly, he added, “But I do consider myself available, if that’s what you were implying.”

There was no mistaking it, now, the flush that crept from Steve’s cheeks towards his hairline. “I wasn’t—”

“Hey, Cap,” Clint interrupted, beaming from ear to ear, “think fast!”

With that, he leapt.

If he was perfectly honest with himself, he knew it was a dumb move before he'd even done it. But he wanted to impress Steve, and doing stupid things to impress people was kind of his M.O.

He let go of the bar at the apex of his swing, threw in a midair flip and regretted it the moment he did. It had been a long time since he'd practiced; his technique was rusty, the flip was sloppy and loose, his momentum nowhere near what it needed to be. On top of that, Steve responded more slowly than Clint had anticipated. How could Clint have factored in the sleep deprivation he didn't know about, the uncertainty caused by his well-intentioned flirting, or the distraction posed by his smile just seconds before. Clint had no idea, after all, that every time he smiled, Steve was startled by how perfectly, how painfully similar his smile was to Bucky's.

So when Steve reached out with both hands, stretching to catch Clint's wrists, he was a second too late. It happened so quickly – Clint just had the time to gasp "shit!" before he was plummeting and Steve's hands were closing on empty air. Steve would have shouted as he watched Clint fall, but he had stopped breathing. Clint landed on the net with a practiced movement, rolling as it dipped and springing to his feet immediately. He gave himself a moment to get over the dizziness. By the time he looked up, Steve was already scrambling down the ladder.

“Jesus, Steve,” Clint groused as he lowered himself to the ground, shaky and doing his best to hide it. Well wasn't this just mortifying? He'd tried to show off and had made a complete ass of himself in front of Steve – in front of _Captain-fucking-America_. Clint let his sarcasm cover the embarrassment and insecurity, “You should ask Erskine for your money back. So much for enhanced reflexes. Way to drop the ball.”

Steve skipped the last ten or so rungs, dropping down and wobbling in Clint's direction. “Are you hurt?” His voice was tight and frantic, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. “I'm sorry, Clint, I'm so sorry.” He grabbed Clint's shoulders, tightly, held on.

Clint had been planning on teasing Steve more, on baiting him into a blame game to distract himself from the urge to crawl away in humiliation. But that plan went out the window the second he saw the state Steve was in. He was white as a sheet, eyes wide with panic. Clint could feel his hands shaking.

“Hey, I was just kidding, that was my bad. I'm fine. Look, not a scratch on me. That's what the net's for.” He smiled and Steve flinched visibly, looking away.

“I was too slow,” Steve confessed, distraught. “I almost had you. I was just too slow. I'm sorry. I should've had you.” He let go of Clint's shoulders, and Clint was grateful for that - he was all for Steve touching him, but vice grips weren't really his thing. “Are you sure you aren't hurt?”

Steve's continued frenzy was starting to get on his nerves. It had just been a little fall, there was no reason for Steve to freak out this much. Clint wasn't a fragile, fainting flower. Just because he wasn't a super soldier didn't mean he was going to break in half over a tumble. Steve hadn't waved it in his face before, had never made him feel inferior, and he didn't much like it.

“Yeah, I'm peachy. Us normal humans aren't made of glass, you know.”

Steve raked his hands through his hair, eyes staring off into the middle distance, chest still heaving with too-quick breaths. He wasn't even listening, Clint thought with a flash of irritation. "Gotta train more. Gotta get faster. What if we'd been in the field? I can't- I can’t believe it was so close.” He absently wiped his shaking hands against his thighs. “I think I'm gonna go back to the gym for a little while,” he said, voice abstract, distant. He turned to leave without so much as a goodbye.

“Wow, Cap,” Clint called after him, not bothering to keep the anger out of his voice, “Overreact much? Seriously, it's okay—”

“No, it's not! It isn't fucking _okay_ , Clint!” Steve bellowed, whirling around unsteadily. His face was flushed with anger, veins standing out on his neck and forehead. Clint had never seen him lose his temper like this, never heard him yell, or drop an f-bomb for that matter. “You don't get it! It's not okay! I let you fall! It was my fault!” Their eyes met for an instant, and then Steve's face was crumpling like a piece of paper. He ducked his head, hand coming up to cover his eyes as he began to sob soundlessly, helplessly, like a child.

It was right about then that Clint got a clue.

“Shit,” he sighed. He might not know Steve all that well, but this was not typical behavior for him. He wouldn’t be crying this hard over a little mishap. There’d been a tripwire hidden in the grass, and Clint had missed it, and now the grenade was going off. “I'm guessing this isn't just about the trapeze?”

Miserably, Steve shook his head. Clint watched him trying to wrestle back control, struggling not to make any noise. When he inhaled, it sounded like it hurt. Steve kept trying to say something, but he was clearly having a hard time getting the words out. Clint waited, wondering if Steve would notice him crab-walking over to his phone to text Natasha to get herself down here, right now, because he'd made Captain America cry, and he was pretty sure that Coulson was going to haunt his ass until the end of time, and he didn't know what to do.

“Sorry,” Steve finally managed to choke out. He looked up, and Clint caught a glimpse of red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks before he turned away. Steve weaved unsteadily towards the door, and Clint didn’t make a move to try to stop him. World’s greatest marksman, yes; world’s greatest shoulder to cry on, not so much. Better to let Steve go and find someone who would know all the right things to say. Someone who hadn’t just caused all this.

Before Steve reached the door, it swung open to reveal Natasha.

“Breakfast is—” was as far as she got before Steve was ducking past her, face turned away, beating a hasty retreat. Quick as he was, Clint was sure she caught sight of his tears. This suspicion was confirmed by the glacial look she turned on him. 

“Clint,” she snapped, and this wasn’t mock-anger, wasn’t banter. He didn’t need to feign a reaction – his name, coming from her in that tone of voice, hit him like a slap, “What the fuck did you do this time?”


	3. Chapter 3

“So I’m back early and I brought donuts,” Tony Stark proclaimed as he breezed out of the elevator just before noon. “In fact, they’re the Avengers-themed ones from that new place on 22nd, you guy’s’ll love them. I think the Hulk’s my favorite, ‘cause of the filling.” He plucked one of said donuts from the large paper bag he was carrying. It was covered in green frosting, with thin lines of darker icing marking out fingers, so that the whole thing had the appearance of a clenched fist. Tony took a bite and continued talking as he chewed, seeming to never pause for breath. “It’s key lime. Very tart. Kind of like the real thing, am I right?” He deposited the bag on the coffee table in front of his teammate, dropping down next to him on the couch before taking a second bite. “Come on, you didn’t really think I was gonna sit in a conference room across the country and miss your birthday, did you? What kind of father would that make me—”

Then, Tony finally paused long enough for his eyes to catch up with his mouth. His eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Clint,” he asked, barely restrained glee in his voice, “Did you… manage to injure yourself on those trapeze _already_?” He glanced at his watch, smirk twitching at his mouth, “Or was it the highwire? It hasn’t even been five hours. You guys really are absolutely helpless without me. Can’t even be gone for a day without the place falling apart.”

“Stark,” Clint warned through gritted teeth, “not in the mood.” He shifted the bag of frozen peas to cover the left side of his face more completely. If he’d known Tony was going to come barging in like this, he’d have hidden in his bedroom. At least Tony had jumped to the conclusion that Clint had injured himself. Did Tony really think he was that clumsy? He’d be insulted, if he weren’t so glad he hadn’t guessed the truth.

“Whoa, someone woke up on the wrong side of the nest.” Tony fished in the paper bag, laid out a napkin in front of Clint and set a donut down on it. Its icing was designed to make it look like an archery target, and sticking from the bulls-eye, at a jaunty angle, was a single pretzel stick.

Clint stared at the it, plucked out the pretzel and began chewing its tip morosely.

“Where is everyone?” Tony asked, wiping donut crumbs out of his beard with an unsurprising lack of dignity.

“Bruce took Thor to the movies. Natasha’s at SHIELD HQ. Steve’s in the gym.”

“They’re gonna get kicked out again, just you watch,” Tony predicted, propping his feet on the coffee table. “I try and I try but Thor’s not that good at laughing with his indoor voice.”

“Mm,” Clint grunted in agreement, picking up the Hawkeye-themed donut and taking a huge bite. The filling was grape jelly. Clint had never liked grape-flavored anything. He took another bite anyway, to spite himself.

“You are uncharacteristically subdued this morning,” he observed, squinting at Clint in open curiosity. “Practically monosyllabic. Something on your mind?”

“Here are some monosyllables for you: bite me, Stark.”

“I don’t see how you can possibly stay grumpy when you’re eating a donut that was named after you. Isn’t that against some fundamental law of nature?”

Clint sighed petulantly, tossing the half-eaten donut onto the coffee table. “I hate grape.” He transferred the peas to his other hand before bringing them back up to his face, flexing fingers that had gone numb with cold. The peas were nearly thawed, but he didn’t feel like getting a new bag from the freezer. A lassitude had settled into his gut that made standing up seem an arduous task. Otherwise, he’d have left as soon as Tony arrived.

“Guess I wasn’t the only one who gave you your present a bit early.” Tony pointed to the side of Clint’s face. “Who got you the shiner for your birthday?”

Well, shit. He supposed it was inevitable. He could hardly keep his face covered up until it healed, and it’d be an insult to Tony’s intelligence to think that he wouldn’t be able to tell when a bruise had come from a punch. He tossed the half-frozen peas onto the coffee table, where they landed neatly atop the oozing, half-eaten donut.

“C’mon, Clint, what’d you do?” Tony asked.

“Why does everyone always assume _I’m_ the one that started it?” Clint said testily.

Tony looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Uhhhh, because you usually are?” He tilted his head to the side; Clint could just tell from the look on his face that he was weighing the variables, trying to calculate which one of his teammates was most likely to have clocked Clint one. “Don’t take it personally, bird brain. If our positions were reversed you’d totally be asking me the exact same question. Whatever it is I guarantee you I’ve done or said worse. Probably twice.”

Clint knew that, annoying as he could be, Tony was just trying to be nice – he just didn’t know how to do it like a normal, sane human being. He groaned, burying his face in his hands, because Tony was right. If any of the Avengers were going to sympathize with him right now, Tony Stark was the one: the king of the social faux pas. 

“I fucked up,” he admitted, voice muffled by his hands, “I fucked things up really badly with Steve.”

“Care to be more specific?”

“Care to blow me?”

“Didn’t think so.”

Tony waited, lacing his fingers together. The absence of his constant stream of dialogue was conspicuous and uncomfortable. Clint tried to outwait him, but he caved in under a minute. Tony wasn’t the only one who had a hard time shutting up.

“He’s avoiding me,” he admitted. “Won’t listen long enough for me to apologize.”

Tony sprang to his feet. “We’ll see what I can do about that.”

“Tony, no—”

But he wasn’t listening. He was already halfway to the elevator, confirming with JARVIS that Steve was still in the gym, winking at Clint as the doors slid open. “I’ll have him up in five.”


	4. Chapter 4

The gym was Steve’s favorite hiding place, when extremes of emotion overtook him. It was a sanctuary, a cathedral with neat pews of high-tech machines and blinding fluorescent lights instead of stained glass. He loved the lingering smell of disinfectant and the faint, familiar sound of JARVIS revving the air conditioner as he walked through the door.

Of course, he didn’t like to think of it as hiding; it was strategy, not cowardice. He didn’t want to be seen like that, not only for his own sake, but for the good of the group. If the Avengers were going to work, as a team, they had to trust and respect one another. The problem was, it was only too clear that some – many – of his teammates were paranoid to the point of pathology and extremely difficult to impress. Steve, who’d spent much of his life going out of his way to prove himself, looked at it as a challenge. He would demonstrate that he was deserving, show them all that he was more than just a mascot or a relic. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let anything as trivial as his damn mood swings jeopardize that goal.

He knew that the best way to conceal something was to convince everyone that it had never existed in the first place, so he didn’t just hide – he hid the fact that he was hiding. The others remained under the impression that he wore his heart on his sleeve (well, maybe not Natasha). For once, he didn’t mind the civic-minded boy scout reputation that came with being Captain America. None of them seemed to think him capable of anything less than an integrity so extreme that it bordered on impolite.

He’d had a setback that morning; breaking down in front of Clint wasn’t part of his plan. He’d let the mask slip, and now the whole thing was in danger of falling apart. That meant it was time for damage control. Intent on exercising himself into a state of absolute, emotionless exhaustion in peace, Steve had ignored Clint’s repeated requests to come out and talk to him. Hadn’t even turned around to look at him, for fear that he’d do something idiotic like start crying all over again. When Clint had abandoned the attempt a while ago, he’d hoped that was the end of it.

Luck, it seemed, just wasn’t on his side that day.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Tony said, loud enough that Steve could hear him over the whine of the treadmill and the pounding of his own feet. “Either you’re gonna shut that thing off willingly and go exchange apologies with Clint, or I’m gonna have JARVIS cut the power to the whole gym. Right, JARVIS?”

“That is correct, sir.”

“What?” Steve gasped out. His breathing was labored: serum or no, his body had its limits. Tony had personally re-engineered the Tower’s treadmill to be powerful enough to give him a good workout without him breaking it, and he’d been running flat-out for the last hour and a half. He was drenched in sweat, shirt clinging to him, face red with exertion.

“Apologize for what?”

“I don’t know, do I? Nobody tells me anything, I wasn’t even gone for a day and it’s devolved to fisticuffs. Just… let him say sorry for whatever stupid-ass thing he did to make you punch him, and then it’s your turn.” Tony said, crossing his arms.

Steve tripped, nearly lost his balance, caught himself on the handrails. He suppressed a wince; his knuckles were raw, had only stopped bleeding a quarter of an hour ago. The punching bag that Tony had re-enforced for his use was lying on the floor not too far off, a large split in its side. He refused to slow the pace of the treadmill just because Tony insisted on talking to him when he was clearly otherwise occupied.

“I didn’t.”

“Sure, Cap, you two were arguing and then he ran into a door. I’ve never heard that one before.”

Steve hit the red STOP button and the treadmill gave a great shudder before falling still. The sudden silence in the room made his breathing sound far louder. The stitch of pain in Steve’s side felt white hot; he pressed a hand over it. “I didn’t punch Clint,” he panted, grimacing. He ran his forearm across his face, getting the sweat out of his eyes. Now that he had stopped running, his mind was catching up. “Aren’t you supposed to be in California?”

“I fast-tracked the meetings and got everything done this morning so I could fly back for the birthday bash.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at Steve and, without apology or explanation, pulled out his phone. Steve was nothing if not forthright. If he’d socked Clint in the face, he’d have at least had the guts to admit it. Something fishy was going on here, and he was going to get to the bottom of it. He sent off a quick text to Clint.

**Steve says he didn’t hit you.**

Clint’s reply came in a few seconds: **what are you nuts of course he didn’t**

Tony sighed. And people said _he_ was bad at communicating.

**I asked about your black eye and you said you two had had a fight, what the hell was I supposed to think?**

Steve, who was getting sick of waiting, decided the best course of action would be for him to leave, and quickly. The situation had already been bad enough before Tony decided to stick his nose in, and now everything was threatening to spiral out of control. Someone, apparently, had gotten into a fight with Clint, and he was telling everyone that it was Steve’s fault. Was this some kind of bizarre payback, for failing to catch him on the trapeze, or for snapping at him afterwards?

A coil of panic tightened in Steve’s chest, making it difficult to catch his breath. For once, the exercise didn’t seem to be helping to dispel his dark mood. It was one thing to cope with the abstract fear of inadequacy; it was quite another to be confronted with hard evidence of his shortcomings. He hadn’t been fast enough to catch Clint. If they’d been on a mission, if Clint had been really relying on him, he’d have ended up dead, and it would have been Steve’s fault. No amount of excuses or distractions would change that.

He made a movement to leave, halting when Tony held up a single, cautioning finger and said, “Nuh-uh! Sit. Stay. Good boy.”

Steve glowered, folding his arms, shifting his weight from foot to foot restlessly. Tony had a feeling he was going to regret that comment later. It was a pretty common premonition for him, particularly where Steve Rogers was concerned. If he managed to get out of this one without getting punched himself, he’d count it as a victory.

**stark if captain america had hit me in the face i wouldn’t have a black eye because i wouldn’t have a face left. it was nat after i told her what happened. i can’t believe people call you a genius.**

“Do I really need to be present for this?” Steve snapped.

“Patience is a virtue,” Tony said, tucking the phone away and flashing his best polished, disingenuous Tony Stark smile in Steve’s direction, “I thought virtuous was your mojo?”

“Stark, I am really not in the mood for this today.” 

“Y’know that’s exactly what Clint said when I walked in the door. I thought I was supposed to be the moody one? You guys are stealing my act. I know, I know, they say imitation is the highest form of flattery. I’m touched, really.”

Steve sighed, knowing Tony had a point. He was acting just as selfish, as unstable, as unreliable as he used to accuse Tony of being. He couldn’t just storm out of here and leave Tony thinking he was going around hitting people for no good reason. He needed to straighten this out, as quickly as possible, so that he could leave and ride out the rest of this emotional rollercoaster very far from prying eyes.

“I don’t know what Clint told you, but I swear to you, I didn’t hit him.”

“Yeah yeah, I got that. That was like, five minutes ago, keep up with me here, Cap. You wanna tell me what _did_ happen?”

Steve was done trying to puzzle out Tony’s mind games. He could feel the end of his rope rapidly approaching. “Not particularly.” He stepped to the side, aiming to walk around Tony and out, but the man mirrored his movement, blocking his path. Steve’s skin crawled with a claustrophobic unease completely disproportionate to the situation. “I don’t see why it’s any of your business, Stark.” 

“My home, my business.”

Intellectually, Steve knew he was quite safe, knew there was nothing Tony could really do to make him stay here or talk if he didn’t want to. That didn’t change just how cornered and trapped he felt. “If I promise to talk to Clint, will you let this go?”

Tony shook his head, still smiling that infuriating smile of his. Acting like this was all some fun game, Steve thought. Enjoying himself. “You know me. I’m not really good at the whole letting things go—”

He broke off, side-stepping to block Steve’s retreat a second time. Steve felt a twist of nausea, wondered if he shouldn’t just shove Tony out of the way and deal with explanations and apologies when he was feeling more himself. 

“Hey,” Tony said softly, smile faltering. For the first time since he’d walked in, there was not a trace of humor in his voice. “Cap, you really don’t look so good.”

“I’m fine.” The response was a reflex for Steve by now, automatic, unthinking.

Tony glanced at the ruined punching bag, as if seeing it properly for the first time. His gaze flicked to Steve’s torn knuckles, to the lock of hair plastered to his forehead by sweat, to the operating panel of the treadmill which proclaimed in blocky red digits just how long and how fast he’d been running, to the way his frame was shaking from fatigue and the fear he couldn’t quite seem to rationalize away. “You sure about that?”

“I’ll talk to Clint,” Steve promised, not meeting Tony’s eyes though he could feel the weight of his stare. Tony was so preoccupied and frenetic most of the time that when he stilled and focused all his attention on a single point, the effect was highly unnerving. “I’ll have a shower and I’ll do it right now, so please stop worrying, Tony.”

And then he was pushing the smaller man aside, making a beeline for the showers and not daring to look back.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting this chapter! Thanks to everyone who has been reading and leaving such lovely comments.

Tony had tried playing it their way. He’d asked Clint to tell him what happened, and Clint had been the opposite of helpful, sending him off to confront Steve without so much as a warning that he might have the wrong end of the stick. Then, when he’d asked Steve, the guy had, quite frankly, wigged out. He was so done doing this by the book.

“JARVIS,” he called, the moment the door to his workshop clicked shut, “give me the surveillance video for Clint and Steve for the last, uh, let’s say five hours, on terminal three.”

“Sir, may I remind you of your agreement with our guests that access to the internal security footage would be restricted to times of crisis?” JARVIS sounded as disapproving as ever; Tony was impervious to it by now.

“Best way to deal with a crisis is to stop it before it happens, buddy.” He perched on a stool in front of a desk whose entire surface was a high-def touch-screen, snapping his fingers in an absent-minded pattern.

“If you say so, sir.”

Two windows popped open, the time stamps in the corners reading 8:13:09 AM. With a flick of his wrists, Tony pulled them into the air where they hung as holographic projections. He leaned back to take in the scenes.

As Tony had predicted, Clint was still asleep, knees tucked up close to his chest, wearing a bright purple eye mask . What he hadn’t expected to see was Natasha in Clint’s bed, her back pressed to his, spine to spine. She was awake, reading a paperback by the light coming in through the window. Tony had never seen her hair so messy, not even after the attack on the Helicarrier or the Chitari invasion of New York. Clint shifted in his sleep, murmuring, and Tony saw Natasha glance at him obliquely. She waited, turning her eyes back to her book eventually when he neither moved nor made any more sound.

The other screen was bright by comparison, showing Steve under the florescent lights of the gym. His weight was balanced on his forearms, his back curled into a C-shape with the tips of his toes suspended an inch above his hair. Apparently, he’d taken Bruce up on his offer and started learning yoga from him. Tony wondered when that had happened. He was also beginning to seriously question his decision to not join them.

“Pause,” he instructed JARVIS, because while he was still curious, sometimes you just had to stop and smell the roses. Or, rather, stop and appreciate the sight of a shirtless Steve Rogers doing the scorpion pose.

After a few screen captures had been saved in a discreet folder on his private server, Tony had JARVIS fast forward the video to just after Clint called him. He watched from that point on in (relative) silence. It was alarming how quickly Steve learned, mimicking Clint’s every movement perfectly by at most the second try.

_You’re on a team of freaks and outcasts, Cap. None of us are all that cool._

_Except Tony._

Tony let out a bark of laughter at that. It was too bad he couldn’t admit to having watched this footage – he would have liked to never let Steve live that one down. So, Steve thought he was cool? And called him by his first name when he wasn’t around, apparently. He was learning all sorts of things, today.

_Do I detect a crush?_

Tony scoffed. A ‘crush’? Clint had all the sophistication and maturity of a middle-schooler. It was only too obvious to Tony (and, he suspected, everyone in the damn Tower except Steve) that Clint wanted a piece of that. Well, who wouldn’t? He was, after all, goddamn Captain America: the superhero, the living legend, the genesis of a thousand wet dreams for people of all genders and sexualities and ages across their great nation. Even Tony had thought about it. Quite a lot, actually. But, after Pepper…

He was so preoccupied by this particular mental tangent that the leap took him by surprise. When Clint just barely missed Steve and went tumbling down, Tony laughed even louder than before.

“Oh, this is going on youtube,” he declared to the workshop at large, “JARVIS remind me to put this on youtube later and make up some excuse for doing it. The world needs to be witness to that moment of epic fail.” He wiped tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes, “Look at it from a PR standpoint – Fury wouldn’t shut up about how we should try to humanize our public image. What’s more human than a guy klutzing out while he tries to show off? Or than his friend uploading it to the internet without his permission?”

“Very little, sir,” JARVIS said, long-sufferingly.

Wrapped up in the thrill of spying on his teammates, Tony missed much of the exchange between Clint and Steve. He’d almost forgotten that he was looking for something specific; Steve yelling at Clint snapped him back to attention. When, a few seconds later, Steve dissolved into tears, Tony’s stomach lurched as if he’d gone into free fall in the suit. 

“JARVIS, back it up to where he jumped and increase the volume by twenty percent.”

This time, it didn’t look so funny. Well, okay, Clint’s half of it did, but not Steve’s response. Tony watched silently, analytically, face as blank as a mask, cataloguing what Steve said and how he said it. It was only too clear to him from the moment Clint fell that Steve was barely keeping it together. Tony couldn’t believe how long it took Clint to realize something was wrong.

Of course, it was easy for him to criticize, sitting here after the fact, with a pause and rewind button. Tony wondered how many of his fights with Pepper could have been avoided if he’d been able to study footage of her reactions ahead of time. 

He thought back to Steve’s demeanor in the gym. The severity of his workout was looking a lot different, in the light of this little incident. Whatever river of crazy Steve had tripped into earlier that day, he was still swimming for his life against the current. Steve hadn’t been just working off some steam, he’d been pushing himself to his limits – and past them – out of guilt. The outward signs might be different, but Tony knew that mental territory all too well.

As Steve ran away, the single video screen split into two again. He bolted through the hallways, blindly, slamming his fist into the elevator control panel so hard that Tony was impressed it didn’t break. As Steve waited for the doors to open, his back bowed as if under a great pressure. He was less careful about keeping quiet, now that he was alone. The noises he made were pathetic. Tony contemplated asking JARVIS to just mute the damn feed, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to admit, even to his AI, how much it hurt him to listen to it.

“Pause video one.”

Tony turned his attention to the other screen. Clint was slouched and sullen, avoiding Natasha’s gaze as she crowded into his personal space. 

_Good to know you have such faith in me, Nat._

_What did you do, Clint?_

_Piss off, I didn’t do anything._

_What did you do, Clint?_

_Alright, you’ve caught me! I made fun of his outfit. Can’t blame me, right? Imagine him trying to camofla-ahhh!_

Tony watched Natasha dig her fingers into Clint’s hair, twisting pitilessly. He slipped out of her grip, kicking her ankle out from under her. The struggle that followed was quick and dirty. It took less than a minute for Natasha to hit Clint and get him into a headlock. She hissed something Tony couldn’t hear, lips so close that they brushed Clint’s ear, and he went instantly limp, all the fight going out of him.

“Back it up, volume up another thirty percent when she whispers.”

_You can’t do this anymore, Clint. Not now it’s just the two of us. If you don’t tell me, there isn’t anyone else to tell._

It didn’t take an intuitive genius to guess that Natasha was referring to Coulson. Tony swallowed, his throat had gone tight all of a sudden.

After that, Clint recounted to her, without fuss, exactly what had been said and done. When he was finished, Natasha sighed, letting him free from the hold. She was pulling out her phone and dialing, tucking a stray red curl behind her ear. She hadn’t even broken a sweat in the tussle.

_What’d I do wrong, Nat?_

Tony had never heard Clint sound so subdued. Natasha’s expression softened slightly. She cupped his cheek, called him an idiot in Russian. 

_You should know what you did wrong. I told you to memorize everyone’s files before you moved in. You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days just because you’re too stubborn to do your homework._

“JARVIS—”

“Let me guess, sir,” the AI pre-empted, “You’d like access to Rogers’ classified, unexpurgated SHIELD file?”

Tony glanced at the other video screen, where Steve was frozen in place, hands braced on either side of the elevator doors, hanging his head as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders.

“Pretty please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Officially abandoned this fic, sorry!


End file.
